As we said in our previous blog post, we completely overhauled the way your account balances are calculated. The vast majority of you won't notice any difference in your balances, but some of you might. We want to address a few common questions that might arise due to this update.

Question: Why are there new accounts called No Account in my account list?
Answer: No Account appears when you have transactions in your register that don't belong to an account. This can be caused by adding transactions and not selecting an account to add them to or by deleting an account but not the associated transactions. To remove these from your list of account balances, simply click on the No Account link and then edit the transactions so they belong to an account or delete them.

Question: Why are my balances different than they were before the update?
Answer: The balances that now appear on the site are calculated by adding up every transaction you've added to your register. It's possible your previous balances were off by a little bit and you didn't notice. If the balances are incorrect, go back and make sure all of the transactions you've entered into the site also appear on your bank statements and that the amounts match.

Question: Where is the Refresh Balances link?
Answer: Since the balances are calculated on demand each time you load the page, there's no need for the Refresh Balances link. In the old method of handling balances, that link was needed if the balances were incorrect and needed to be re-calculated. Now, each time the page loads it's essentially like clicking the Refresh Balances link.

We've been busy working behind the scenes on a huge amount of updates to the site. The biggest of these updates is the way account balances are calculated. Previously, account balances were stored separately in the database which could cause some issues with the correct balances being shown on the site. To remedy this, we've gone back and updated and re-coded a lot of the site so the balances are calculated on demand each time the page is loaded. This means that at any given time, the balances that appear on the site are the correct balances based on the transactions you've added. We've created a separate blog post that covers some FAQ's about this new update. That blog post can be found here: https://www.clearcheckbook.com/blog/miscellaneous/account-balances-update-faqs.

In addition to that giant overhaul, we've also gone back and worked on optimizing the server interaction behind each page to dramatically cut down on the number of database queries which directly affects the load time of each page. For example, on the Dashboard page alone, we cut the number of database queries to 1/4 what they previously were.

We also made a few smaller updates such as being able to jive a transaction through the Edit Transaction form. There were also a few small bugs we addressed while going through all of these updates.

On top of all that, we've also added a new tool to the site. We have been getting requests for a Money Lending Tracker for a while now and finally built one. The new Money Lending Tracker can be found by clicking on Tools and then Money Lending Tracker. This new tool lets you track who owes you money as well as who you have borrowed money from. There is an associated gadget with this tool that can be added to your Dashboard.

We hope you find these latest updates and features useful! We are always looking for feedback and suggestions for future improvements to the site as well. If you have an idea for a new feature, tool or update to the site, please use the Contact Us form at the bottom right side of the page and let us know!

We've been busy working on a huge amount of updates and tweaks to the site plus a new tool that will help people track who owes them money and who they've borrowed money from.

The updates and tweaks revolve around the way we calculate your Overall and Jived balances. Right now, those balances aren't calculated live each time the page loads. Instead, there is a table in our database that is constantly updated when you add/edit/delete transactions. This table is used to calculate your balances. Some of you might have noticed that occasionally this table gets a little out of balance and requires the clicking of the "Refresh Balances" link. This link goes through and re-calculates the balances and corrects any issues.

Well, we're tired of having that table get out of whack every once in a while so we're doing away with it and the need to refresh your balances. Coming soon, your balances will be calculated on the fly each time the page loads so you can be sure the balances that are displayed are the correct amounts.

We're also optimizing the rest of the site to help improve the responsiveness and load times when you navigate through the site. We've cut the number of database queries on the dashboard page alone to 1/4 what they are right now.

The new feature is a Money Lending Tracker that lets you track who owes you money or who you borrowed money from. This feature has been requested by several users and we believe what we created will work well for your needs.

We're working on finishing the tweaks and making sure there aren't any issues with the new updates and then we'll release all of the above updates. Keep an eye out on the blog to learn when the updates have been launched.